I've been playing table tennis in my spare time for a couple of years, so I think I can say I'm quite an amateur. Can someone help me learn serves where the ball is quite low and the second pitch is inside or very close to the end of the board? I can put a backspin serve like that but it's quite predictable and the opponents flicks it and gains an initial advantage.

There are a lot of videos on YouTube where a lot of people serve like that, I can never reproduce however much I try. The ball just seems to run from my bat. Is there any practice videos for training to serve like that?

In youtube a lot of people talk about sidespin and backspin together in a serve, is that something I can ever learn?

I've been playing table tennis in my spare time for a couple of years, so I think I can say I'm quite an amateur. Can someone help me learn serves where the ball is quite low and the second pitch is inside or very close to the end of the board? I can put a backspin serve like that but it's quite predictable and the opponents flicks it and gains an initial advantage.

There are a lot of videos on YouTube where a lot of people serve like that, I can never reproduce however much I try. The ball just seems to run from my bat. Is there any practice videos for training to serve like that?

In youtube a lot of people talk about sidespin and backspin together in a serve, is that something I can ever learn?

The best player I would say is Ma Lin. He's well known for his ghost serve:

The keys for a double bounce are:**The racket in motion when brushing a ball must be at the level of the table**You are brushing the bottom of the ball**The brushing direction is sideways - you may see how he does it in slow motion.

Backspin - practice hitting the ball onto the floor and getting the ball to spin back to you. What part of the ball do you need to contact to make this happen? What angle is the bat? What can you do to make more spin?

Side spin - again, hit the ball onto the floor, this time making it rotate side ways. What part of the ball do you need to contact to make this happen? What angle is the bat? Count seconds until the ball stops rotating side ways (not rolling) - what do you need to do to make the ball spin for longer time?

Clues: contact point, bat angle, speed.

Then you can move to the table. At first don't worry about height the ball travels over the net, you can adjust this later - put a towel close to the net (assuming both players are right handed) on your opponents back hand side. Can you get the ball to bounce over the net close to centre, spin back and sideways and land on towel? This requires the back spin and side spin you learnt hitting balls on the floor.How do you combine both? How can you increase spins?How can you get ball low to net? (Clue - where do you need to strike ball in relation to table)

At beginner level, where you aim first bounce on your side of the table should help it land in a similar place on opposite side of table. More advance level, all serves bounce on your side of table should be close to baseline - but this needs good touch / feel / control.

You mean you want a serve that bounces twice on the opponent's side of the table.. Yup, this is a very useful skill. As you note, fairly easy to do with backspin but not with topspin, generally because you're used to topspin strokes being fast while backspin strokes are supposed to be slow. The trick is to apply topspin with an open racket. Yes, it can be done.. instead of stroking forwards, you swing the racket sideways, producing sidespin. This is, for obvious reasons, called a "pendulum serve". A pendulum serve can have sidespin, side+backspin or side+topspin, and the stroke can be made to look almost identical. It's also easier to keep short. Against beginners, it's deadly - they can't read it so the return either goes sailing off the end of the table or into the net. Better players can usually read them to some degree - until you come up against someone who is a lot better than you are at disguising the spin.

Just look up "pendulum serve" on YouTube, you'll find a lot of videos.

1. Thinner contact between the ball and the rubber.2. Waiting for the ball to drop lower before you make contact.

You will need to spend hours by yourself at the table with a bucket of balls to practise. Start with no spin. When you can get that short, move onto other spins. The more spin you want, the thinner the contact should be. Don't drive the ball into the table. Let the ball spin off the rubber and fall of to the table.

Incidentally.. here's a great place to start. Not exactly what you're looking for but there's a lot more of this.

Iskandar

I just have one more doubt, I have a Sanwei m8 + Friendship 729 rubber, is it possible to extract the same amount of spin that the guy in the video is extracting? Or is it possible only with superior rubber or better table tennis boards?

Yes it is. You need to learn the "whip" ... there's other videos where he talks about this. The Bed Serve and Floor Serve exercises will help develop this.

Mind you.. having faced Brett's serve in person, I'll have to say I've NEVER come across so much spin in my life. Then again, he's the only international pro player I've ever had the chance to hit with. It's not his racket, it's his technique that makes the difference.

Yes it is. You need to learn the "whip" ... there's other videos where he talks about this. The Bed Serve and Floor Serve exercises will help develop this.

Mind you.. having faced Brett's serve in person, I'll have to say I've NEVER come across so much spin in my life. Then again, he's the only international pro player I've ever had the chance to hit with. It's not his racket, it's his technique that makes the difference.

Iskandar

I spent about 4 days with a stick to practice that whip, still nothing happens, not even a hint of a spin. The ball just moves slowly . I just cannot get that ball skimming off the bat thing he talks about. Whenever I concentrate on that the ball just pops directly over the other side of the net.

Yes it is. You need to learn the "whip" ... there's other videos where he talks about this. The Bed Serve and Floor Serve exercises will help develop this.

Mind you.. having faced Brett's serve in person, I'll have to say I've NEVER come across so much spin in my life. Then again, he's the only international pro player I've ever had the chance to hit with. It's not his racket, it's his technique that makes the difference.

Iskandar

Hi..do you have any advice on dealing with deviation spin, the spin that happens after the ball pitches on the board. it is completely baffling me as I go for a block or when I try to reach the pitch of the ball

Do you mean reading serves, or dealing with the ball bouncing sideways on the table due to sidespin? To deal with the former I think you'd have to practice (or play games a lot) with someone who has really good serves, and can serve variations with backspin and topspin that look the same. I don't think there are any shortcuts. Just as I didn't get a single one of Brett's serves back, there are people I play against every weekend that I manage to fool maybe 2-3 times a game - they think I'm serving topspin when it's backspin and vice versa. Not enough to beat them all the time, though (I miss too many attacks and my doubles partner often misses a huge proportion of the easy kills which result in the misreading of my serves.. )

One great learning aid - download Brett's table tennis training app (can't remember what it's called, a search of the forum should find it) from the Android Play Store. The basic app is free, there's a paid upgrade that adds a lot more features. But one part of the app deals with serve recognition - you get to read the serves of several players (mainly Brett and William Henzel). Choose the slowed-down option at the beginning and you get to see how to actually do the serves and to disguise the spin. Brett's pendulum serve is still pretty much unreadable unless you know what to look for - the top and backspin serves look just about identical.

The ball bouncing sideways is also something that you have to practice against. The seamless plastic ball is notorious for this, it took a while to get used to it.

I spent about 4 days with a stick to practice that whip, still nothing happens, not even a hint of a spin. The ball just moves slowly . I just cannot get that ball skimming off the bat thing he talks about. Whenever I concentrate on that the ball just pops directly over the other side of the net.

Assuming you're trying a regular chop style serve. You need to open the bat more. Try contacting the ball at 6 o'clock. A completely horizontal bat. Some people may think they are contacting the ball at 6 o'clock when they aren't even close. In that case try contacting at 7 o'clock (5 if you're a lefty).

If the ball still goes too long, wait for the ball to drop much lower before contact. The ball should fall onto the table, not be driven into the table.

Forget the whip for now, it's not working for you. You need to get bat angles and contact time correct first. Try this exercise. You should use really tacky rubber for this to work well:

1. Clean your rubber with water and a rubber cleaner sponge. 2. Grab a brand new ball out of the packet.3. Bounce the ball once on the rubber. See the mark it left? 4. Now do one serve. See the mark it left? It's probably similar to when you bounced the ball earlier. Very circular, like the ball bounced off straight away. 5. Your goal now is to make the ball slide over the rubber. This will leave an elongated mark. See how long a mark you can create. Clean you rubber every few balls.

Hint: if you bend your knees at contact time, your contact will be thinner and you will get a longer mark.

Developing the skill to create longer contact time will then set you up to practice the whip. You will have more margin for error in the timing of your acceleration.

It's difficult, but so are most things that are worthwhile doing...but it would pay you to to try to practice a serve that will actually backspin into the net on the opposing side of the table. If you watched the Ma Lin vid he does it. Years ago I taught myself to do it. Its tough to get it so mastered to use in matches...so I don't. However, having got it down well enough, I took it back a step and now have a totally reliable backspin serve that will probably bounce 3 or 4 times inside the table. I can serve one with reasonably reliability to come back to the net, but its not reliable enough in how high it bounces...which will just get killed by most opponents. So..how to do it?

Step 1. Realise the best way to get a ball to backspin is not to hit down on it, but bounce it upwards from your bat. This is what the hitting it at 6 o'clock is all about. If your bat is travelling down at contact, you can't hit it at anything like 6. You have to either have the blade travelling horizontal to get the contact at 6 or upwards and forwards to hit it at between 6 and 7. Pretty hard to project the ball forward striking it past 7. If you can get a stroke, BH or FH, whichever is more comfortable...try it a LOT from both... that has the rubber striking on the front side of the ball and bouncing upward off the bat and forward you're on your way. Try it with no table as is suggested in other posts.

Step 2. When you have the ball spinning backward after the 2nd or 3rd bounce on the floor, try it on the table. This is where it gets a little trickier. you need the ball bouncing off the rubber upward and landing about 12-18 inches (approximate) before the net. The ball should bounce over the net and land about the same distance past it. Depending on the table surface condition and the age of the ball, it should then go forward until spin takes over speed and start to haul it backward. In the beginning you might not get it to stop on the table, but eventually with lots and lots of tries it will start to work.

Step 3. Once you have this working and you are used to the feel of bouncing the ball off your rubber as opposed to hitting the ball, focus on the height the ball goes over the net and how short you can have it bouncing from side to side of table. Stop trying to hit at 7 and go back to 6. Still bouncing the ball from underneath it rather than hitting on the ball. You should find you can get a reliable action going from all the practice you've done such that you will eventually serve a short underspinny ball that bounces multiple times on the other side.

HINT: Learn to vary the length of this serve. Opponents who get used to you giving them the same length serve just lift it back easily. It's when they have to judge how long the ball coming at the is, and where it crosses the net, that they can make mistakes. I get a lot of points from opponents that misjudge the spin and the ball length, especially when they have to reach further than they expected. When you are forced to reach in TT, that's when you lessen control over your stroke and have to improvise. Improvising the stroke is always what you want to force your opponent to do...much more likely to cause them to fault.

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